The Odd Women eBook

‘If you don’t want any supper,’
she said in a moment, ’please go and tell them,
so that they needn’t sit up for you.’

Alice obeyed. When she came up again, her sister
was, or pretended to be, asleep; even the noise made
by bringing luggage into the room did not cause her
to move. Having sat in despondency for a while,
Miss Madden opened one of her boxes, and sought in
it for the Bible which it was her custom to make use
of every night. She read in the book for about
half an hour, then covered her face with her hands
and prayed silently. This was her refuge
from the barrenness and bitterness of life.

CHAPTER XXIX

CONFESSION AND COUNSEL

The sisters did not exchange a word until morning,
but both of them lay long awake. Monica was the
first to lose consciousness; she slept for about an
hour, then the pains of a horrid dream disturbed her,
and again she took up the burden of thought. Such
waking after brief, broken sleep, when mind and body
are beset by weariness, yet cannot rest, when night
with its awful hush and its mysterious movements makes
a strange, dread habitation for the spirit—­such
waking is a grim trial of human fortitude. The
blood flows sluggishly, yet subject to sudden tremors
that chill the veins and for an instant choke the
heart. Purpose is idle, the will impure; over
the past hangs a shadow of remorse, and life that must
yet be lived shows lurid, a steep pathway to the hopeless
grave. Of this cup Monica drank deeply.

A fear of death compassed her about. Night after
night it had thus haunted her. In the daytime
she could think of death with resignation, as a refuge
from miseries of which she saw no other end; but this
hour of silent darkness shook her with terrors.
Reason availed nothing; its exercise seemed criminal.
The old faiths, never abandoned, though modified by
the breath of intellectual freedom that had just touched
her, reasserted all their power. She saw herself
as a wicked woman, in the eye of truth not less wicked
than her husband declared her. A sinner stubborn
in impenitence, defending herself by a paltry ambiguity
that had all the evil of a direct lie. Her soul
trembled in its nakedness.

What redemption could there be for her? What
path of spiritual health was discoverable? She
could not command herself to love the father of her
child; the repugnance with which she regarded him
seemed to her a sin against nature, yet how was she
responsible for it? Would it profit her to make
confession and be humbled before him? The confession
must some day be made, if only for her child’s
sake; but she foresaw in it no relief of mind.
Of all human beings her husband was the one least
fitted to console and strengthen her. She cared
nothing for his pardon; from his love she shrank.
But if there were some one to whom she could utter
her thoughts with the certainty of being understood—­